We hope you will find it easy to browse topics using the "Browse Topics" bar on the left, but to assist you we have prepared this brief tutorial.

Topics

The site is organized by the seven topics you see in the left column of our home page. We recommend that you begin by choosing one of these topics, such as Water Supply and Sanitation.



In the center column you will then see some brief descriptive text along with three or four subtopics. We recommend that you chose a subtopic next, such as Wastewater and Water Reuse.



At that point, you will see (a) some text in the center column that summarizes our recent reports in the subtopic, (b) followed to the right by illustrations of report covers, and, (c) in the right-hand column, several search options. If you are interested in a particular report — for example, our Florida Keys report — and wish to browse it on your own, click either on its cover illustration or the reference to it in the summarizing text in the center column.




Search Tools

If, however, you are interested in a topic that may be covered in several different publications, you have two choices. The first is to enter your own key word or key phrase in the search box in the top of the right-hand column. The other is to click on one of the key phrases in the right-hand column, such as "bacterial pathogens."



Either way, the site will search for occurrences of that word or phrase in the reports in this subtopic, and show you all of the occurrences of the word or phrase by report and chapter.



Clicking on [srch] (i.e., "search") beside any of these occurrences will show you all of the places in the chapter where the word or phrase occurs, and in its context. Clicking on [read] will send you to the first page of the chapter. The following screen assumes you clicked on [srch] for chapter 3 of "Issues in Potable Reuse".



At this point you may wish to access the entire report and options for reading it online or obtaining an electronic or paper version by clicking on report's cover illustration.


Special Research Tools

The site has two additional tools that you will see at the top right of the screen illustrated here. While we have tried to combine our reports into useful categories on this site, you may find that clicking on "Find more like this report" produces a slightly different set of books that you may find useful. Also, if you have text from a report of your own or another institution's, clicking on "research dashboard" followed by "Find more like your own document" allows you to compare this text with that of NRC reports, which again may provide useful matches.